Rose (7 page)

“Really?” Zac was so excited he released his hold on the bridle and threw himself into George’s arms. Hen took the opportunity to tighten the cinch. Rose imagined George would stop just past the first thicket and readjust the saddlecloth.

“As soon as we get a chance, we’ll go after some mustangs. Monty said he saw a big herd just across the river.”

“Can I go with you? I want to pick out my own horse.”

“Of course you ca—” Jeff began.

“We’ll see about that,” George interrupted. “But someone has to stay here to protect Rose in case any bandits show up while we’re gone.”

“I want a black one,” Zac said, apparently unmoved by any possible danger to Rose. “Then no one can see me when I sneak up on them at night.”

“We’ll talk about that later,” George said.

“When you say that, you don’t mean to take me,” Zac complained.

“I certainly won’t take you if you throw a tantrum,” George said, his tone severe. “Now I have to go. You be sure to do everything Rose asks. We’ll talk about your horse tonight.”

Feeling a lot like a drowning man about to go under for the third time, Rose watched them ride away. George had told her
he wanted an army career. He was also set against anything that smacked of home and family responsibility. He wanted no ties whatsoever.

Rose had sworn she would never marry a soldier.

Her father had rarely been home. He never took his family with him because he said it was dangerous and it distracted him. Her whole life had been spent waiting for him to come home on his short visits and counting the days until he had to go back.

And now she discovered George wanted an army career and didn’t want a family.

She was surprised at how much this disheartened her. She knew she liked George, depended on him, had built daydreams in her mind and heart with him at the center. Only now did she realize these were more than dreams. They were hopes. She had placed her future in George Randolph’s hands without even knowing it.

And now he had quite positively handed it back to her.

She felt lost. Like a ship whose rudder had been wrenched off in a collision with a hidden shoal. Her future yawned before her, empty and somehow dangerous.

“We sure got us a heap of dirty clothes,” Zac stated, intruding on her thoughts. “You mean to wash them all today?”

“Every piece,” Rose said.

“You don’t have to. Nobody will mind.”

“What you mean is you don’t want to do all that work,” Rose replied. She felt a little better. She always did when she talked to Zac.

“Yeah, that too,” Zac admitted with a brash grin. “Seems like an awful lot.”

“Once we get everything clean, we won’t have to do this much again.”

“Why are women always carrying on about being clean? My ma was forever pestering me about it. Ever since she died I don’t wash no more than once a month, and I’ve growed just fine.”

“But you don’t smell so fine,” Rose said, wrinkling up her nose. “Now rustle about and get me some more wood. It’ll take boiling water to get this dirt out.”

“I don’t see nothing wrong with dirt,” Zac grumbled as he headed off. “God must have liked it, too. He sure made lots of it.”

Rose looked around the kitchen. Something about the room bothered her, but she couldn’t decide what it was. That annoyed her. This was her first full day at the ranch, and she had too much work to do to get distracted by vague feelings. It would take every minute she had to be ready by the time the men came home. If her plan was to succeed, she had to stay ahead of them.

Still, when she stepped into the pantry to look for some canned fruit, the feeling settled over her again. The moment she stepped back into the kitchen, she knew what it was. The room was too small to account for all the space in this half of the house. It was so obvious she wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before.

Because you’ve been too busy and worried and upset and frightened to notice anything that wasn’t shoved under your nose.
She stared at the inner wall and almost immediately saw the door. It was nearly covered by heavy coats and rain slicks hanging on a series of wooden pegs. She would have to change that. The kitchen was no place to keep such clothes.

She moved one coat and tried the handle of the door. It turned, but she had to take down two more coats before she could get the door open.

She stepped into Mrs. Randolph’s bedroom.

The room was fully as large as the kitchen itself and filled with furniture such as Rose had never seen. The few pieces of china and crystal had told her the Randolphs had once been rich. This room showed her what the inside of their Virginia mansion must have looked like.

Apparently Mrs. Randolph had brought everything from
her bedroom, from an enormous canopy bed covered in satin and mounded with pillows to the several rugs that covered the rough board floor. Someone had even tried to wallpaper the room. The attempt had been given up after the smooth inner walls had been covered. The log-and-mortar outer wall was covered by furniture and curtains. Brocade curtains and swags hung at windows made small and high for defense rather than beauty. Chairs, chests of drawers, wardrobes, and a daybed competed for the limited space in the room. A door at the end of the room, roughly adjacent to the pantry, must lead to a storage closet.

Rose stepped into the middle of the room even though she felt she was violating some unspoken taboo. Dust and the fine grit of Texas dirt covered everything. They probably hadn’t disturbed the room since their mother’s death. Rose wondered whether this was some sort of shrine or just a corner of their lives they had shut away. She knew she wouldn’t ask George. If he wanted her to know, he would tell her.

It crossed Rose’s mind that this should have been her room, but she knew she would never sleep here. It would remain closed, a monument to all that had gone wrong in the Randolph past.

A thin trail of smoke curled across the horizon.

“I thought she would have been finished with the wash long before now,” Hen commented.

“She probably didn’t have time, what with keeping an eye on Zac,” Jeff said.

“We did have a lot of dirty clothes,” George pointed out.

“If she’s waiting for us to hang them up for her, I’m leaving,” Monty declared.

“Good God,” George exclaimed. “We don’t have a clothesline. She can’t have dried anything.”

“Christ! That means everything I own is wringing wet,” Monty groaned. “What am I going to wear?”

“What’s wrong with what you’ve got on?” Jeff asked. “You’ve only worn it a week.”

“Shut up,” Monty growled. “You don’t smell so sweet yourself.”

“If you two are going to start arguing again, you can stay out here until you’re done,” George said. “I’ve had enough for one day.”

“Me, too,” said Tyler. “You’re worse than a pair of girls.”

Monty jumped his horse at Tyler, but the boy was already off and running toward the corral.

“Wouldn’t be any arguing if Jeff would lay off Monty,” Hen said.

“I wouldn’t bother him if he would just think before he opened his mouth,” said Jeff.

“You should have stayed in Virginia,” Hen said, his eyes bright with anger. “I don’t think you’re going to like Texas too well. It sure as hell ain’t going to like you.” He jabbed his ankles into his horse’s side and cantered after Monty and Tyler.

George and Jeff rode in silence for about a minute.

“You agree with him, don’t you?” Jeff demanded angrily.

“Dammit, Jeff, when are you going to stop letting your bitterness poison everything you say? The boys are convinced you hate them.”

“I wouldn’t say anything if I wasn’t concerned about them. They ought to know that.”

“They don’t. Even Rose commented on it.”

Jeff stiffened so alarmingly George knew he’d made a mistake by bringing Rose into the discussion.

“You can swell up like a toad if you want, but if an outsider can see it in just one day, it’s worse than you think,” George went on.

“I don’t intend to take her as a judge.”

“You apparently don’t intend to take me or the boys, either.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“You got a raw deal, Jeff, nobody’s denying that, but you’re
alive. You can walk. There are hundreds of thousands of men who’d count themselves lucky to be able to do that.”

But Jeff’s angry silence didn’t occupy George’s thoughts for long. As he rode into the yard, he saw Monty and Tyler angrily shouting at Rose. Hen and Zac also seemed to be lined up against her. With an exasperated sigh, he spurred his horse forward.

“You’ve got to get rid of her,” Monty shouted.

Tyler agreed. “She’s crazy.”

“I did what you said. I asked them,” Rose told George, “but it didn’t do any good.”

“I should think the hell not,” Monty exploded.

“What did you ask?” George said.

“She wants them to take a bath and put on clean clothes before supper,” Zac announced. “And you gotta make them do it. She already made me.”

Exasperated as he was, George couldn’t help but smile at Zac’s indignation. The little boy would never forgive him if he ended up being the only one to take a bath.

“The bathtub is already filled with hot water,” Rose said, “and I have plenty more in the wash pot. Your clothes are folded on your beds.”

“What did you use for a clothesline?” George asked.

“Zac found some wire. We strung it between two trees, but the clothes would dry faster in the sun.”

“I didn’t even think about it until I was nearly home,” George apologized.

Clearly the woman was ingenious. She might be bossy—she
was
bossy—but she could be depended upon to do her work without a lot of fuss and bother.

Not like Ma. With her, nearly everything was a crisis. She needed help deciding what to wear.

Just thinking of his mother made him feel guilty about not having been home to take care of her or to relieve the twins of a responsibility which must have been too much for their young shoulders.

“Do we have to take a bath?” Tyler demanded, bringing George’s thoughts back to the point of contention.

“I intend to,” George said. “I can’t count the times during the war when I would have given almost anything for a decent stream to bathe in. I can’t resist the temptation of a hot bath, especially when it’s already waiting in my room.”

“Hell!” Tyler exclaimed, apparently taking George’s desire for a bath to mean he had to take one, too.

“Wait a minute,” Monty said and headed for the kitchen. He came back a moment later, surprise and indignation on his face. “You don’t have dinner ready. You really mean to starve us if we don’t wash.”

“If it were ready this early, it would be cold before everyone finished their baths,” Rose told him.

“No, it wouldn’t. I’d eat now.”

George could see
I told you so
written all over her face.

“I’ll go first,” Hen announced, stunning his twin by heading for the house without further comment.

“I’m next,” Tyler called, apparently resigned to the inevitable. “Before the water gets too dirty.”

George nearly laughed at a boy as filthy as Tyler being concerned about dirty water.

“How about you?” Monty demanded.

“What about me?” Rose asked.

“You ought to take a bath, too.”

“I’ll have my bath in the kitchen after I’ve cleaned up.”

“How do we know you’ll really take one? Nobody will see you.”

“You’ll know because she says so,” George said, impatient with Monty’s teasing. At least he thought Monty was teasing.
He looked truly angry, even vengeful, but then Monty hated to be forced to do anything he didn’t want to do.

“I think one of us ought to make sure,” Monty said.

“Don’t be stupid,” George said.

“We can supervise her. I’ll take the first watch. It shouldn’t be a bad duty. Sure beats watching for rustlers.” Monty took Rose by the arm. “Come along. Might as well get it over with.”

Rose resisted, but Monty was stronger. He pulled her toward the house.

“I don’t think Rose finds this amusing,” George said. He found it surprisingly difficult to hold his temper.

“I do,” Monty replied.

“Let her go. Nothing in her contract says she has to bathe.”

“It ought to.” Monty kept his hold on Rose.

“Maybe you should take your bath after Hen,” George suggested, his calm voice belied by the look of sternness in his ebony eyes.

“You going to make me?” Monty said.

“I don’t care if you never take a bath,” George said, “but I’m afraid you will have to let go of Rose.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Don’t be a fool. You can be as mad as you like at me, but you can’t go about mishandling women. There’s been enough of that in this family already.”

Monty let go of Rose with a curse, shot George a look of cold fury, then stalked off toward the house.

“I’m next,” Tyler protested, as anxious to defend his place in line as he had been moments ago to avoid the bath altogether. Monty shoved him aside.

“We’ll throw the water away after Monty,” George said. “Why don’t you see if Zac needs help with the milking or picking up the eggs? You might ask Rose if she needs anything from the garden.”

“That’s not my job.”

“Do it or stay home tomorrow,” George snapped.

The younger boys went off, Tyler complaining loudly, Zac crowing in triumph. Jeff drifted off toward the corrals.

“You do seem to have a knack for turning things upside down,” George remarked, his irritation at Monty causing him to speak sharply to Rose.

“I did ask them,” Rose said.

“I know,” George said, upset he was taking his irritation out on Rose. But he was even more upset by the suspicion that he was angry at Monty not because he had been rude, but because he had threatened Rose. He had been ready to fight his own brother. He didn’t want to feel that strongly about anybody, especially not Rose.

“You’ve worked awfully hard since you got here. You must be exhausted.”

“I am a little tired.”

“Why don’t you take tomorrow off.”

“Do you mean to ask Tyler to do the cooking?”

He could have sworn he saw imps of amusement in her eyes. “I didn’t mean the cooking.”

“You don’t think that’s work?”

Now he knew she was teasing him.

“I guess I didn’t say that very well. Why don’t you take a book and sit under a tree tomorrow. I’ll leave the boys here to do the chores.”

“We’ll see.”

Her smile made him wonder how it was possible to mix coquettishness and innocence in the same expression. He also wondered how such a tiny movement of muscles could have such a strong effect on him.

“In the meantime, I’ve got to see about getting supper finished. If Monty’s not fed soon after he’s finished with his bath, he’s liable to throw me in the tub yet.”

Her effort at humor barely eased the tensions inside George. “Thanks for remaining cheerful despite so much opposition. Now I’d better get inside and hurry the twins along, or you’ll be midnight getting out of the kitchen.”

Rose felt a pang of disappointment as she watched George walk to the house. She was certain he was more concerned about not being left alone with her than about the hour he sat down to his dinner. He was prepared to thank her, appreciate her work, support her decisions, but that was as far as he would go.

Forget the notion you’re ever going to be more than a housekeeper to him. He’s told you what he wants.

But hope didn’t die that easily. George’s brothers weren’t anything like the Robinsons, but she felt a kinship with them. They were all lonely souls looking for a place to keep warm. She would love to help if they would only let her.

“This has got to end now,” Monty shouted.

Jeff agreed. “You’ve gone too far this time.”

“I don’t mind stripping the beds and hanging the blankets on the line to air,” Rose informed them, “but I can’t lift the mattresses.”

“Who says they have to be lifted?” Monty demanded.

“They need to be aired out.”

“Then open the windows.”

The clamor of angry voices outside woke George. Realizing that Monty and Jeff had set aside their mutual antagonism long enough to become embroiled in a new argument with Rose, he felt tempted to sneak out the back door, saddle his horse, and head for any army fort west of the Mississippi and north of the Arkansas River. Just once, why couldn’t Monty do what he was asked without kicking up a fuss? And why on earth did Jeff have to join in? What was it about Rose that made him so antagonistic? George couldn’t find a single thing to object to about Rose.

Except that he thought about her too often.

He hadn’t known her four days yet, and it seemed she was on his mind all the time. And he didn’t mean her cooking or her running battle with Monty.

He meant Rose herself. He had dreamed about her. And the things they did in those dreams would probably turn Rose’s cheeks crimson. George had tried to look at her as just a housekeeper, but a few more dreams like last night and he wouldn’t be able to think about her without his body stiffening immediately.

It had happened three times yesterday, twice while he was in the saddle and once at dinner. During the enforced abstinence of the war years, his body had seldom reminded him of its unsatisfied need. Now he was feeling almost as randy as he had in his teens.

If either Jeff or Monty noticed, he’d never hear the end of it. Hen probably wouldn’t say anything; he didn’t know if Tyler would understand. Zac wouldn’t care even if he did understand.

And of course he didn’t want Rose to know. What could she think except that he had lured her out here into the wilds of southern Texas to take advantage of her?

George didn’t intend to take advantage of her, but he didn’t know what he did want to do. At one moment he wanted nothing more than to be alone with her so he could satisfy his hunger for her. At another time he wanted to be far beyond the reach of any woman, especially a woman as domestic as Rose. He could see babies in her eyes. And the last thing on this earth George wanted was to become a father.

“I’m going to ask George.” That was Tyler. The little worm.

“Get up, Hen,” George said to his brother.

“Time to quell another domestic rebellion?” A rare smile lifted Hen’s lips.

“Sounds like it. Unless you want to handle this one.”

“No. I hear Jeff.”

“He is your brother, too. You don’t have to treat him like a leper.”

“You tell him that.”

“I have.”

“Doesn’t seem to do much good.”

“Nothing I’ve done around here seems to have done much good. I might as well have gone straight into the army.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

George had his back to Hen, but he turned back to face his younger brother.

“Zac needs somebody to look up to,” Hen explained. Then, much to George’s surprise, Hen drew on his pants, picked up his mattress, and carried it outside.

“Shut up, Monty, and get your mattress,” Hen said to his twin. “You’re getting to be a regular jaw-me-dead. Where do you want this, ma’am?”

Rose had to close her mouth before she could reply. “On the corral fence.”

“You can’t mean to knuckle under just like that,” Monty protested.

“If we’d helped Ma more, she might not have died,” Hen said as he walked away.

“Well, I’ll be damned and double-damned,” Monty muttered.

Just then George came out with his mattress over his shoulder.

Monty took one look and broke into an ear-splitting grin. “By damn, Rose, if you haven’t outmaneuvered me again. Slipped around my left flank and routed the whole damned column without me even knowing. Maybe I should have brought you half a dozen turkeys instead of just three.” He walked over to his horse and untied from his saddle three large birds that he had shot that morning after his watch.

“Three are quite enough,” Rose said, as bewildered by her success as Monty. “You can bring me more some other time.”

“I sure will,” he said as he hung the turkeys on a nail in the porch roof, out of reach of the dogs.

“Okay, you scamps,” George said to Tyler and Zac. “If you want a hand with those mattresses, you’d better get off your hindquarters.”

“But, George—” Tyler began.

“Give it up,” Monty said. “We’re in full retreat. We’ve been beaten by a better man.”

“She don’t look like no man to me,” Zac pointed out.

“That’s why we’ve been beaten,” Monty said, looking first at George and then at Hen with an inquisitive gleam in his eyes. “I made the mistake of ignoring her most obvious weapon.”

“What are you talking about?” Tyler asked.

Monty threw his arm over his brother’s shoulder. “It seems we’ve seriously neglected your education, my boy. You’d better ride with me today.”

“It might be better if he rode with me,” George said. “I doubt his understanding will be much improved by anything you would tell him.”

“Zac, put the sheets in the wash pot,” Rose said. “Tyler, you can hang the blankets on the line. I’ll have breakfast on the table by the time you’re finished.”

“I can’t bring you my mattress or my sheets,” Jeff said, waving his stump at Rose.

Rose knew he was registering his objection to her victory rather than complaining about his arm.

“I’m sure you could if you made up your mind to try.” She spoke as normally as she could into the uncomfortable silence. “But you can get me some water from the well, if you like. I’m going to need more to wash the floors.”

George hadn’t expected Rose to confront Jeff’s opposition as she had, or to understand the real meaning of what he said. Her deft handling of his remark increased his growing respect for her.

“Come on,” George said to Jeff. “The sooner we get the water, the sooner we eat.”

As soon as they got beyond hearing distance of the others, George turned angrily on his brother. “I think it’s about time you decided what you want.”

“All I said was—”

“You’re the one who demanded a housekeeper. The others
would have been happy with a range cook. Well, I hired her. And not even you can deny that Rose has done more work in two days than we ever thought possible. Yet all you’ve done is object to everything.”

“I can’t help it. I don’t like her.”

“Well, I do, so start giving her a little cooperation.”

“Are you telling me you’d choose that woman ahead of me, your own brother?”

“I’m telling you to start pulling with the family and not against it. And as long as Rose is working for the family, I mean her as well.”

“I suppose you’ll want me to leave if I refuse.”

George swore in exasperation. “I want no such thing. This is your home as well as mine.”

“It’ll
never
be my home. We should go back to Virginia. We could get Ashburn back if we tried.”